Vatican Supports the “One Laptop Per Child” Initiative

A plan to equip the world's poorest schoolchildren with a low-cost, rugged, portable, wireless laptop has found some enthusiastic support among the Jesuits and in the Vatican.

Vatican officials, ambassadors to the Vatican, and representatives of the world's religious orders were among the more than 200 people attending an Oct. 29 conference highlighting the One Laptop Per Child initiative. The conference was sponsored by the communications office of Rome's Jesuit headquarters and two commissions of the international organization of superiors general of religious orders.

"There are 50 million students in the Catholic Church's school systems," which include children in some very poor parts of the world, he told Catholic News Service Oct. 29.

He said he would like to "get the church to directly participate and maybe provide (the laptops) to kids in very poor countries, in very remote areas."

U.S. Jesuit Father Keith Pecklers told CNS the Jesuits were encouraging other religious orders to become involved in the One Laptop Per Child project.